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" In 'John Henry Days,' I was taking my idea of junketeering and sort of blowing it up to absurd extremes. "

Colson Whitehead

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" Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there. "

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" There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there. "

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" In college, I wrote maybe three short stories. "

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" Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American literary tradition. That's my aim and what I see as my mission. "

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" I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me. "

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" There's always an attack on the sophomore novel from some quarters. "

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" If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way. "

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" I was sort of a miserable teenager. "

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" You can't rush inspiration. "

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" I admire Vegas's purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality. "

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" Access to information, to music or any kind of culture, is getting faster and faster and more streamlined. At each juncture, people are thrown into tumult and have to adapt or die. "

Colson Whitehead

" I love getting out of the Q train at Union Square. It's such a mix of people, like a party. There's always an errand you can do along there, whether it's picking up contacts or buying poker chips. "

Colson Whitehead

" Other people have hang-ups about what's literary or genre or whatever, and that's sort of not my problem. You're supposed to write what you have to write, and you're supposed to keep moving. "

Colson Whitehead

" A lot of my books have started with an abstract premise. "

Colson Whitehead

" I was allowed to write about race using an elevator metaphor because of Toni Morrison and David Bradley and Ralph Ellison. Hopefully, me being weird allows someone who's 16 and wanting to write inspires them to have their own weird take on the world, and they can see the different kinds of African American voices being published. "

Colson Whitehead

" I've always had a love of cards, ever since I was a little kid. I think poker, as a system, describes the chaos of the world. Our sudden reversals, our freak streaks of fortune. The belief that the next hand can save you, and the inevitable failure of the next hand to save you. I think that describes my world view pretty well. "

Colson Whitehead

" Generally, I walk around in a glum mood. "

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" Each book requires a different kind of treatment and structural gambit. "

Colson Whitehead

" For me, the terror of the zombie is that at any moment, your friend, your family, you neighbor, your teacher, the guy at the bodega down the street, can be revealed as the monster they've always been. "

Colson Whitehead

" 'Zone One' has one kind of an apocalypse, and 'The Underground Railroad' another. In both cases, the narrators are animated by a hope in a better place of refuge - in the last surviving human outpost, Up North. Does it exist? They can only believe. "

Colson Whitehead

" If you write about race in 1850, you end up talking about race today because in many ways, so little has changed. "

Colson Whitehead

" Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator. "

Colson Whitehead

" I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French. "

Colson Whitehead

" Once I got to college, it seemed that the Hamptons were a little bit too posh for me and didn't represent the kind of values I was embracing in my late teens. So, I didn't go out there, except to visit my parents, for a long time. And then, after 9/11, I discovered it was a nice, mellow place to hang out. "

Colson Whitehead

" Schools don't teach American history that well, especially a lot of black American history. "

Colson Whitehead

" In '82 and '83, that was the rise of the VCR. Every Friday, my brother and I would go to Crazy Eddie's - which was a video store in Manhattan - and rent five horror movies. And that's basically what we did, basically, for three years. Becoming social misfits. "

Colson Whitehead

" I've always thought the Nat Turner story to be very interesting. "

Colson Whitehead

" I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. "

Colson Whitehead

" I like questions that tee me up to make weird jokes, frankly. "

Colson Whitehead

" I knew that a zombie book would not particularly appeal to some of my previous readers, but it was artistically compelling, and being able to do a short nonfiction book about poker was really fun and great. "

Colson Whitehead